As disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,594,453 (Ranken et al.), it is known that (hydrocarbylthio)aromatic amines can be prepared by reacting an aromatic amine with a hydrocarbyl disulfide in the presence of a catalytic amount of a Lewis acid. This process typically results in the formation of a mixture of hydrocarbylthiation products, and it is frequently desirable to resolve the mixture--at least to the extent of separating the products having different degrees of hydrocarbylthiation from one another and/or from any unreacted aromatic amine. When small research quantities are involved, this separation can be accomplished by distillation. However, distillation has been found to be unsatisfactory when larger quantities are involved because of the product degradation that occurs during prolonged heating at distillation temperatures.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,763,239 (Smolin) teaches that certain diamines can be extracted from monoamines with an aqueous mineral acid.